Media: printed advertising

Printed advertising is only of various media methods used to help sell or retail a product. Nevertheless, advertising on paper continuously proves to be one of the more successful ways of drawing the public's attention towards something, or more importantly boosting a product's sales. Many things are taken into account when a printed advertisement is still on the drawing board or still actually being thought out, for example, the advertisement must be categorised in order to appeal most to the audience that it is targeting.

Media developers also use many different techniques in order to make an advert stand out more or be more effective in delivering its message. For example, areas of a page, which are more effective in capturing a viewer's attention, may be identified and used accordingly by an advertiser, sequentially, to help boost the sales of their merchandise by helping to make the product seem more appealing to the potential buyer. The first advertisement that I will be looking at is for Twix chocolate bars, which dates from two years ago, the second a recent AA advertisement, for car data checks.

The purpose of both adverts is obviously to help to boost the sales of its product more, by making the product seem more appealing to likely consumers. The manufacturers may also assist the advert by allocating it where it is more likely to reach broader audiences of its target consumer. I found the Twix chocolate advert in a Playstation magazine and I feel that this fact alone allows the viewer to accurately envisage the audience that the manufacturer is targeting with this product.

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By printing this advert in a Playstation magazine the manufacturers are hoping to reach younger people or perhaps more accurately, younger boys since they are the most likely category of people who would read such a magazine, although the advert may in fact reach a broader audience. Obviously since the manufacturers think that younger people are more likely to want to buy this product, they chose to advertise in a source which would reach these people more broadly than another medium such as a newspaper.

The AA car data check advertisement however, I did find in a newspaper, which to an extent illustrates the diversity of the audiences that each advert has been custom-made to target. Newspapers are for factual reference regarding current affairs whereas magazines usually specialise in areas of interest for different clusters of people. The choice of location for this advertisement is also comprehensible; not only did I find it in a newspaper, but also in the middle of car sales section of the newspaper.

The advertisement would obviously relate to people buying cars and so would attain more attention as a result of its direct relevance to the reader. It would have been illogical to have placed the Twix chocolate bar advert in a place such as that of the AA advert, and vice versa, since the target audiences of each advert would doubtfully have been reached at hand, should they have been allocated inaptly. I feel that the choice of the actual location of both adverts is commonsensical in each case, and that the target audiences of both adverts would have been reached to some extent as a result of the adverts' understandable placement.

The graphology of each advert may also help in making it conspicuous to the potential consumer. The images used or features of an advert commercialising one product may not necessarily be appropriate or ideal for an advert aiming to sell another product or another type of product. The image that the advertisement gives off for its merchandise may make the difference between the product selling or not selling, and so the process of creating an image for the product must be thought out accordingly, with different variables being taken into account when designing the advert.

The image in the Twix chocolate advert is brightly coloured with the obscurity of 'Norm' contrasting heavily with the colours encompassing him, and in a sense, contrasting with the mood of the advertisement also. Norm separates the couple who, like their surroundings, are in full colour, warning them of the risks that they could be taking should they actually decide to kiss, echoing in effect the message on his badge 'sensible is the game', to the inconvenience of the two.

Also, both above and below each of the couple, there also subsists half of a Twix bar, which would join together to form two entire Twix bars should Norm be out of the frame, illustrating that not only is Norm detracting from the couple's enjoyment, but he is also separating the Twix bars from becoming complete, suggesting that the Twix bars are alike to the enjoyment experienced by the couple, which would appeal to the viewer.

The advertisers purposely exploit the potential of the layout and positioning of this advert by including instructions for the viewer to fold the paper in such a way that Norm is effectively cut out from the frame entirely, and the sentence underneath compromised so that 'kissing at ... said Norm' instead becomes a clearly dissimilar message, to that previously in place of 'Twix a break from the Norm'. Aside from this, the couple are also placed much closer together and may continue in their practices without the objections of Norm detracting them from doing so.

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